


Sifting the Evidence

by orchid314



Series: Four Vignettes [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Developing Relationship, Gen, References to The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-21 20:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: A train journey in which one deduction is made and another is not.





	Sifting the Evidence

**Author's Note:**

> I've taken liberties with the timing of the case of The Speckled Band, which John Watson mentions as having taken place "early in April in the year '83." I've situated it a little earlier, in August of 1882, about a year and a half after the first meeting between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
> 
> Thank you to the incredibly generous rachelindeed for her beta-reading of this story.

The carriage of the train swayed pleasingly in the August afternoon. Holmes and Watson had left the station at Leatherhead and were now traveling through a green and white, late summer countryside. Holmes registered bishop's weed, yarrow, cornflowers, and bees the size of lemon drops in the woodland that unfolded outside the window of their compartment. They had it to themselves, since few were returning to London at this time of year; the holiday makers were at play on their beaches or else settling down to well-deserved naps at this hour.

It was a warm day and both men were in their shirtsleeves. Watson had rolled his up to his elbows, his arms lightly dusted with dried perspiration. He was writing in a stern little black notebook, pausing every now and then to glance upwards before setting down some fresh sentence. It was a new kind of notebook he was trying out, but Holmes rather thought he liked the homely brown one better, with its scuffs and dents forming a record of what they had achieved together in their association over the past year and a half.

"What are you scribbling away at?" 

Watson replied with his own question, intent on setting down everything he would need for later. "What first set you to suspecting that a snake was involved in the crime? And what is it that embittered Dr Roylott so, that he faced the world with such fury?" He grew pensive and added, "I confess that I feel a certain degree of embarrassment at sharing the same profession with an ogre such as he, and one who spent time in the tropics, too. We all have experiences in life that would twist and warp us, but why are some individuals changed so greatly for the worse, while others seemingly escape such a horrible fate?" 

Holmes could see that the subject troubled Watson. 

"As to that," he replied, "there are so many influences that converge to form the character of a man, that we would have to trace back to his earliest years to understand the entire panorama. But I'm confident that, provided sufficient information could be unearthed, we should arrive at a pretty clear idea of what any person eventually becomes. It's the same with a case: you consider all the pieces, and, if you're examining the matter with an open mind, eventually all of them fit together into an integrated whole. So it is with people, I find."

Watson appeared to ponder this but did not comment upon it, and Holmes went on to explain the rest of the process by which he had solved the crimes of Dr Roylott and the death of his stepdaughter. 

"But see here," Holmes continued, "I'd leave out the most distressing details about his abuse of the girls..."

"Oh, most definitely. I don't think the editors of _The Strand_ would go in for that anyway. I'm tempted to add some other exotic animal, though–perhaps a baboon. Or a cheetah?"

"Ah, Watson," Holmes laughed in spite of himself, "you and your embellishments. Are you so persuaded that the British reading public won't accept a case on its own terms? Must you always embroider and sensationalise?"

"We've had this conversation before, Holmes. Does it do anyone any harm, as long as my accounts are true to the essentials? And who are we to begrudge readers a little escape now and then?"

Holmes knew that there was no real heat in his friend's response. It had become something of a ritual with them, for Holmes to needle him about his writing and for Watson to offer a token rebuttal but otherwise continue on with his version of events.

Holmes turned his thoughts to an unsolved case that he had been mulling over when they were interrupted by the visit of Miss Stoner to Baker Street two days before. Here was another suffering family, the Abernettys, with an epileptic son who had died tangled in his bedsheets while the second nursemaid, charged with watching him, had been called to prepare the parsley sauce for dinner.

Holmes leaned his head against the cushion of his seat, his mind slipping into another province, one in which he revolved the elements of the case in his mind, viewing them now from this angle, now from that. As he sorted the evidence, he simultaneously observed, as if from a great distance, the way the sun fell on Watson's fair hair and flickered across his earnest face behind his eyeglasses. The light sifted through the leaves of the deep green trees outside as the pieces of evidence sifted through Holmes's mind, and he marveled at the consonance between the two worlds. Watson's fair hair– 

Swiftly, like a hawk diving through the air towards its prey, he caught at the solution: William Abernetty, MP for Dumfriesshire, a pillar of the establishment, was the author of the deaths of his wife and young son. 

"Holmes?" 

Watson. By some alchemy Holmes did not yet fully comprehend, his friend, by his very presence, had been a spark to the solution. A conductor of this August light that surrounded them, directing it and super-charging Holmes's faculties. What an absurdly perfect–or perfectly absurd–notion. A smile, sweet and beatific, suffused Holmes's whole being and filled the compartment. He came up through layers of abstraction to the reality of the train and found Watson transfixed, studying him.

"It was William Abernetty, the father, Watson. He is the architect of that poor family's despair."

Holmes described his theory, but as he did so, he noticed that Watson had grown quiet and responded in monosyllables, so at odds with the customary expansiveness he showed when presented with an hypothesis. After congratulating Holmes politely, Watson took up his newspaper, retreated behind it, and said no more. 

Holmes puzzled over this. Was Watson ill? Should he ask him if he were? Or had he gone too far in teasing him about his beloved stories? 

"Watson, are you feeling altogether well?" he ventured, but was rebuffed with a brusque "I'm trying to catch up with the news since we've been out of town. Do you mind?" 

Holmes paused, then shrugged it off and let Watson carry on as before. So very often there was no accounting for people's humours.

Silence reigned for the rest of the journey, except for the taut snaps of the newspaper as Watson turned and folded its pages.

By the time they arrived in London, Holmes could barely contain his agitation to be up and away. He grabbed his valise and dashed off, with Watson hastening after him, asking where he meant to go. 

"Hurry up, Watson! I've got to alert Lestrade to the solution that came to me in the train. I don't want to send a telegram because it's much too complicated and would only arrive garbled anyway. Besides, there's more than a little urgency, not to mention delicacy, to arresting the perpetrator."

Watson, his newspaper flying, emerged from the station onto the street, with its boiling pavements, where the dust and trapped heat of London in August met him. He struggled to work his way into his coat, cramming his hat on his head and his eyeglasses in his pocket and holding on for dear life to his overnight bag. He looked longingly at a tobacconists' shop as they ran past it. 

"Never mind that, Watson! You can have your smoke when we get home," Holmes cried. "While you read me your draft of the Stoke Moran story–with the cheetah and baboon and whatever else you please!"


End file.
